According to Eline de Boer, a PhD candidate at Radboud University, babies are clearly curious. In 2020, fellow researchers Francesco Poli and Sabine Hunnius already discovered that babies focus their attention on information they can learn from, and they look away when there is nothing new to learn. They also found that babies differ in their eagerness to learn.
Are Curious Babies Smart Toddlers?
Babies develop very fast. They are born as vulnerable and helpless little beings, but in only a few years, they become active and social chatterboxes of their own will. How do they learn so much in such a short time?
Chain reaction
To study the long-term effects, De Boer invited the same babies back to the Baby & Child Research Centre almost three years later. This time, they took an intelligence test. De Boer says: “Babies who were very eager to learn at eight months scored higher on the intelligence test at preschool age than babies who were less eager to learn.” These children scored exceptionally high in language and knowledge. The researchers think this is a chain reaction: a baby who shows a strong interest in the world may receive more verbal responses from adults. In this way, the child learns more words and facts. “A child creates more chances to learn by being curious,” De Boer explains.
A benefit, not a disadvantage
At the same time, the opposite is not true. Babies who were less eager to learn did not automatically score lower on the intelligence test later. Curiosity seems to act as a “boost”: children who are extra curious as babies show better cognitive results later on.
Measuring eye movements
But how can you measure a baby’s curiosity? The researchers developed a new method. They showed babies shapes that moved across a computer screen in a specific pattern. One shape’s location was easier to predict than the other. A camera, an “eye-tracker”, recorded the babies’ eye movements. The researchers found that babies looked longer when they could still learn something about the shapes' movement patterns. In other words, the babies’ attention was not only drawn by novelty or complexity, but mainly by how much information the shapes gave them.
“Babies are incredibly eager to learn,” De Boer concludes. “And this curiosity probably gives a boost to long-term cognitive development.”
Contact information
- Contact
- Prof. S. Hunnius (Sabine)
- Organizational unit
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Theme
- Brain